Tom Leung, who writes the Raising Humanity newsletter, just did the thing almost no family does. He ran the real financial math on a $400,000 Cornell degree for his older son and published the result.
His conclusion is uncomfortable and correct. The elite-degree path earns the most lifetime income of any option he modeled, and it still finishes last in wealth, by a wide margin. The reason is the $400,000 you spend at 18 instead of invest. Over four decades, that capital dwarfs the salary premium the degree buys. In his words, compound interest does not care about your fancy diploma.
The research backs him, and it goes one step further. When economists compared students who were admitted to the same selective schools, attending the more elite one barely changed their earnings. The student drives the earnings, and the school barely moves them. The exception is low-income and first-generation students, for whom elite access genuinely pays off. Which means the full-pay families who can most afford the elite price are the ones for whom it is least justified.
He already sensed this when he weighed UC Davis against Cornell. My upcoming book makes the rule explicit: the major clears the bar before the school does. His older son chose Cornell for plant science and environmental engineering, a high-return field, and the cheaper school he weighed, UC Davis, ranks second in the world for agriculture.
His younger son’s filmmaking is a different and far riskier bet, because in the arts the price buys almost nothing measurable. Same family, opposite major.
He is asking exactly the right question. The honest answer is that an elite degree is a luxury purchase, fine for a family that can afford it and a mistake for one that borrows to buy it. Run your own numbers at collegeroi.org.